Dear Steemians - I upvote comments!

Hey everybody! It's only been a couple months since I've gotten truly engaged with Steemit and I'm really starting to appreciate the community here. I can't say that about any other social media platform. YouTube used to refer to the "YouTube community" a lot, but it's completely hollow compared to the community here at Steemit. I don't know how long we will have this sense of being a community, because I have a feeling this place is about to blow up! But right now, the people on this platform have a unique conscientiousness and are drawn to a platform that is blockchain-based and free of censorship. The basic features of this platform have drawn a great crowd.

So I've embraced four practices to be more engaged and support this community that I want to share with you.

1. Plugging Steemit! When I was on stage at Anarchapulco last week with Cynthia McKinney, I plugged Steemit from the stage. Last night, I did an interview and convinced the interviewer to start posting all of his content on Steemit - as part of him interviewing me! (I turned the interview on him briefly at the end to ask if he was on Steemit and then made a plug.) Whenever I meet someone who is a content creator, I show them my numbers here and ask, "Are you making this kind of money with your content? I'm still doing almost a million views a month on YouTube and I make more money from a single post here than in a whole month on YouTube." I am now fully engaged with Steemit as my primary social media presence and so it is INGRAINED in my messaging because I so believe in the cause of information freedom, realizing the potential of the internet, and advancing the human conversation.

2. Directing traffic! I just recorded two new outros for all of my videos that go up on YouTube and Facebook. They basically say, "Screw this old government-sponsored, sell-your-attention for advertisers, centrally-controlled, censorship-burdened, poisoned-conversation platform and get on Steemit!" My entire social media strategy is focused on Steemit now and everything I do on other platforms is designed to direct traffic here. For those of you with a strong presence on other platforms, be patient and be persistent. It takes a long time for people to make the switch and you need to keep a strong presence everywhere that you can until everyone is on Steemit, but trust me, it's worth it.

3. RSing! As I said from the stage in Anarchapulco and as I've told every content creator in person, I want to help people who are new here get a leg up so they're not starting from scratch, especially with the delay in account creation when bringing their audiences on from other platforms. I'm still getting my own production fully up to speed, but when it is, I should be making about six posts a day here. For every two posts I make, I want to ReSteem someone else's post. So I have 21 slots/week available to help others. As I've told so many people in person now, any time you have a post that you think my audience would enjoy, please just email it to [email protected] and I'll RS it! Simple as that.

(As a side note, we need to be wary of those in the community who are not collaborative and always about "me." When you help someone who does not play well with others and doesn't lift up or promote other content creators, you're just helping them. But when you help someone who is always helping others, you're helping everyone they're helping and helping the community! There are plenty of snakes and crab people and infiltrators in our movement and one indicator of a bad actor is that they not only do not help others, but actively pull people down for no reason, like crabs in a bucket.)

1. Upvoting comments! My upvote isn't worth a lot, but rather than bicker with people on Facebook or trying to outsnark each other on Twitter, I read the comments on almost all my posts here. And I upvote a lot! If you're new and trying to get into the community, take the time to be engaged. Upvote posts and comments! Comment on my posts and earn a few bucks here and there. I also include a note at the bottom of most of my posts to encourage engagement and give back to the community: "Whoever has the top comment on this post after 24 hours can claim a free signed copy of FREEDOM! by sending me an email at [email protected] with their address."

This is the new frontier of social media. As much as I have been (very deservedly) critical of the old social media platforms for their corruption, censorship, corporatism, sharing data with governments and cowing to their demands, I have always been a big proponent of what they represent in decentralizing the power of the human conversation. While in a sense, this human progress happens organically, it doesn't happen automatically. It happens with a lot of consistent, deliberate effort. It happens with love and compassion and community and words fail to express how much happier I am to be engaged here instead the old social media sites!